INTERNATIONALLY SIGNIFICANT BIRD ALERT

Feb 25, 2025

Hi everyone! Alex and I went to bird world last week!

That same willet, hunting for insects and crustaceans by poking its beak into the mud.

A willet, by Peter Brannon. All bird photographs in this post are from the Audobon Society’s American Bird Lookup.

The Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve is a saltwater wetland located about 20 minutes down the coast from us in Long Beach.

The oceanwater flows in and out through a small inlet. This keeps the water inland calm, allowing silt and sediment to build up into a marsh.

A great egret, bar-tailed godwit, and an American wigeon (I think). I’m not really sure if my identifications are correct but I think I’m pretty close.

A bar-tailed godwit, by Corine Bilek. The one we saw also only had one leg.

An American wigeon, by Brian Kushner. There were a bunch of duck-looking things so I’m super not sure on this one.

California’s coast is an important part of the migratory flightpath for many birds, making the gentle waters of Bolsa Chica an excellent resting place for birds throughout the year.

Click the picture to watch a heat map of birds migrating in real time!

Thanks to the variety of species that migrate to Bolsa Chica throughout the year, the Audobon Society has designated the habitat an internationally significant bird area. Walking along the park’s wooden path feels like stumbling into Jurassic Park.

These are either long-billed curlews, marbled godwits, or whimbrels. Maybe I’ll get a real camera one of these days.

I have no idea what these guys are lol. Probably the same as above.

A long-billed curlew, by Stephen Pollard.

We’ll definitely be back during the summer, when many of the birds will be breeding. I can’t wait!

Here are some more birds we saw at Bolsa Chica, but that I didn’t photograph. A black-crowned night heron, by Rufus Jones.

Double-crested cormorants, by Lorraine Minns.

A (Brandon) sanderling, by Laura Fraizer.

Okay, last one. That’s a lot of birds! An American white pelican, by Kenton Gomez.

My role-playing group has been playing my game Cartoodle using every Lego set ever. Here are some highlights from this past week:

Dracula giving up his dialysis clinic for his boyfriend Karl Marx.
Fred showing up late and wondering where Daphne and Velma went (they were in Hell).
Naymar Ream the Offbrand Slenderman getting scared by something really, really scary!
A werebear eating Real Human Babies.
Frankie Stein and Clawdeen Wolf failing their midterms.
Bobo the Bonobo saving everyone from the werebear, who turned out to actually be Purple Guy in disguise.
Millennial Snake People.
Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Raegan, and the East India Company. Scary!

Click the picture to read about our trip to Girlyland.

Click the picture to read about our trip to Adventureland.

Click the picture to peruse the slides for yourself. We now have a way to the Shadow Bin!

A Real Game Changer

This weekend at Shan’s I ran a game based on a show called Game Changer, “The only game show where the game changes every episode, except for Taskmaster, Ellen’s Game of Games, and all the other shows where the game changes every episode.” The main conceit is that the contestants don’t know how the game actually works until they start scoring (or losing points).

After passing out my most recently-used pens, we answered the age-old question:

"Would the person holding the PRECISE V5 ROLLING BALL please tell us why the PRECISE V5 ROLLING BALL is the best kind of pen?”

I supplied some information about each pen, plus some drawings I’ve done with it. We had a great mix of some people reading straight off the slide, and others really selling their wares. See if you can figure out what the words at the bottom mean from the other slides.

I really love this Hellboy drawing. If you’ve bought prints, you can probably expect one of these when I send ‘em out.

I tried to have two pros and two cons for each pen. This was about to become more difficult…

The bottom buttons denote: inside, tip, ink, price, and amount per pack.

You might be wondering how this game works. Well, to completely avoid answering that question, we instead had:

And then:

The game has the potential for up to three winners: the person who presented their pen the best, the person who won the debate, and the person who guessed the closest to the average score of each pen. Here’s the leaderboard from this weekend.

If you played last weekend, you probably just noticed that the results here look a little different than what I originally said. That’s because… because… because…

After fixing my spreadsheet, it turns out that my randomly clicking things to test the form a week before actually got the highest score. Oops! Anyway, congrats to Emily, our real winner, Hannah, our real second place, and Mikeala… my coworker who also clicked randomly the week before! Mwahahahah!

And that’s all I have to say on the matter. Congrats to our other winners Max and Nick, and you can click here if you’d like to run the game yourself. Pens not included, but you can draw straws or something.

The truth is that all the pens have pros and cons. So since I can’t decide, I think you all should decide for me.

That’s it for this week! Thanks for tuning in!

BONUS MANGA

Alex and I visited Naples Island, which looks like a scene straight out of Kiki’s Delivery Service. For only $4,000,000, this could be your view too!